Thursday, November 28, 2013

FULL TEXT: “Evidently she didn’t like you very well,” Judge
Sylvester J. Snee remarked yesterday after John A. Meyers, 34, of Munhall
[Pennsylvania], had described how his wife, Mary, hit him on the head with a
bottle, threw books and other things at him, threatened to shoot him on several
occasions and called him uncomplimentary names.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

NOTE: Anujka de Poshtonja, “The Witch of Vladimirovac” is
known, in English languages sources, under various names: Anna Pistova, Anyuka Dee, as well as the nicknames “Banat
Witch,” “Little Mother Anjuschka.” Her crimes took place in Panchova, Banat
(Banyat, Banci) district, present-day Serbia, then, Jugoslavia.

In the following articles there is a great deal of redundancy,
yet each offers important information not highlighter in the others. As is
typical for such English language sources, there is great variation in the
spelling of names and places, due both either transliteration, multiple
languages in use in the region in question or by simple error.

***

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 8): A 92-year-old
woman called the "WitchofVladimirovac," near Belgrade, Jugo-Slavia – her name is Anna Pistova –
is accused of
having made a practice during many years of supplying deadly love potions and intentional poison draughts
to a large number of unhappy Serbian wives. Her trial was at Pancevo, and six rich
farmers' widows were tried with her.

The
police regarded Anna, known throughout the country as "Little Mother Anjuschka," as a harmless
herbalist. The
mysterious death of Burgomaster Carina of Novoselo last year created an unusual sensation, however, and
resulted in the
arrest ofthe wise woman and Mme.
Carina. A strong force of police fetched Anna from her miserable cottage at midnight,
because she is venerated by the peasants, who would have defended her.

—Neglected Wives.—

Carina's widow, a 29-year-old woman,
educated in Switzerland, is remarkably pretty. Her husband was 20 years older,
and their married life was wretched. The bodies of Carina and 12 other husbands have been exhumed and an
analysis made at Belgrade University has shown in all cases evidence of vegetable poison. Anna's
defence is that she gave the love potions to neglected wives, and it was their fault if
they overdosed their husbands. Carina's widow and the five other accused with
her insist that they only tried to revitalise their husbands' love without
intending to kill them.

FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 8): Anna Pistova [Anujka de Poshtonja], aged 92, the
so-called witch of Vladimirovac, near Belgrade (the capital city of
Jugo-Slavia, formerly Serbia), will be tried on murder charges, together with
the widows of six rich farmers, as the result of an accusation that she
supplied deadly love potions to unhappy Serbian wives. The police regarded her
as a harmless herbalist until the mysterious death of the Burgomaster Carina,
of Novoselo, last year. It caused a sensation, in the district, and led to the
arrest of Pistova and Carina’s widow. A strong police force brought Pistova
from her squalid cottage, at midnight, to avoid a rescue by the peasants, who
venerate her. Madame Carina, a pretty woman, of 29, led a cat and dog life with
her husband, who was 49. The bodies of Carina and 12 other husbands were
exhumed, and the autopsies disclosed vegetable poisoning. Pistova says it was
the wives’ fault if they overdosed their husbands. The widows declare that they
merely tried to revitalise their husband’s love, and did not intend to kill
them.

FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 8): Vienna.— Anna
Pistova, age ninety-two or ninety-three, is to go on trial shortly in Pancevo,
Yugo-Slavia, on the charge of furnishing poison to wives who wished to get rid
of their husbands. Six wives who tried her “love potions” on their husbands and
became widows are to be tried with Anna, or after her case is settled. Some say
she has led to the deaths of 60 husbands, and of many wives, for men also
patronized her.

While Anna is called the “Witch of Vladimirovac,”
a place not far from Belgrade, and is an exceedingly aged person, it appears
that she is by no means a peasant crone. Her story as now told is one for a
novelist, but it is difficult to say how much truth it contains. The United
States is not the only country in which a woman on trial for murder is provided
with a romantic past.

~ The Village Enters. ~

The story is that Anna was the daughter of a
rich cattleman of Rumania, who moved to Vladimirovac 80 years ago, and that she
received an excellent education. The villain, goes the story, entered her life
when she was twenty-one. As is always the case with more than ordinarily heartless
female killers, she had to be more than ordinarily beautiful.

The villain was a young officer, who finally
cast Anna aside and left her a pessimist and misanthropist.

Anna sought seclusion after the affair of the
heart, and with her knowledge of five languages gave herself up to medical and
chemical studies. She came out of her grief sufficiently to marry a landowner
named Pistova, by whom she had 11 children. Only one survives, a prosperous
merchant.

Her husband’s death sent Anna back to the
test tubes and beakers.

She built a laboratory onto her house and
evolved from herbs many real or supposed remedies for diseases, but she is
charged with having plenty of arsenic around. She dispensed many of her
remedies to wives who were not inconsolably distressed when their husbands
tried the remedies and left the wives with property and prospects of other
husbands. As has been said, it is charged that not a few husbands who bought
remedies of Anna were careless about leaving them around where their wives
could sample them with disastrous consequences for the samplers.

That is the defense. Anna’s counsel assert
that she was not responsible if wives or husbands took overdoses of her
medicines. Some of the fatal medicines are said to have contained vegetable
poisons which were exceedingly difficult to detect, but some of them appear to
have contained arsenic.

~ Called ‘Em Tonics. ~

Arsenic is used as a tonic and some people
became arsenic addicts. The husband of Mrs. Florence Maybrick was an arsenic
addict, which fact made Mrs. Maybriek’s conviction of poisoning him to death
with arsenic extremely doubtful as to the charge having been proved. Anna’s
defense is somewhat along the same lines. She says that the death dealing
medicines containing arsenic which she dispensed were first rate tonics for the
purchasers, if used properly.

Anna herself is said to be a walking
advertisement for her own tonics, if she takes them. She is described as
looking not more than fifty-five years of age, instead of ninety-two or
ninety-three; has her hair curled dally and uses cosmetics.

FULL TEXT (Article 4 of 8): A record murder trial has just
begun at Panchora, Jugoslavia, where ninety-three-year-old Anyuka Dee is
charged with having murdered more than fifty men.

She is known throughout the district as the “Banat Witch.”

Legends throw a veil of mystery around her lonely life, and
as the wives of wealthy farmers liked to go to her for help in case of illness
and also to consult her on other difficulties, she drew a large income, which
enabled her to lead a life of comfort. Recently it was charged that Anyuka Dee,
in addition to saving lives with herbs, also destroyed them with arsenic if she
were paid to do so.

Post-mortem examinations in this farming district being of a
careless nature, murderers have little to fear from official inquiries. Anyuka
Dee was accused by the gossip of a client who complained to another woman that
her husband would not die, although she had given him arsenic for nearly a
year. More than fifty men and women, who are alleged to have administered
poison furnished by the “witch,” also will be arraigned.

The trial of Anyuka Dee will last at least a month. She is firmly
convinced that she will not be executed on account of her ago. She even hopes
that she will outlive her prison term, if she is sentenced. The old woman is
vain. She uses lipstick and powder and waves her hair every day. Having plenty
of money, she frequently orders new dresses and has developed a large appetite.

She persuaded the prison authorities to allow a dentist to
make her another set of teeth because, she said, with the old ones could not
eat enough to keep herself in trim.

[“Jugoslav ‘Witch’ On Trial at 93 As Slayer of 50 – Adviser
of Farmers’ Wives Accused of Poison to Many Men for Pay,” New York Herald
Tribune (N.Y.), Jun. 23, 1929, section II, p. 1]

***

FULL TEXT (Article 5 of 8): Vienna, July 6 – Anyuka Dee, a
woman 93 years old, charged with having more than fifty men, was sentenced
today to fifteen years in jail. She was convicted specifically of supplying
poison to fifteen women who wished to get rid of their husbands.

The trial took place at Panchova, Jugo-Slavia. For a score
of years and more the old woman had been known throughout the district in which
she lived as the “Banyat witch.” For a consideration she would supply arsenic
in the wives of the wealthy farmers of the countryside with instructions how to
administer it.

FULL TEXT (Article 6 of 8): Vladimirorvac, Jugoslavia, July
10 – The arrest her of Anujka de Poshtonja, a 90-year-old Rumania [sic] woman
who is charged with selling slow-acting poisonous mixtures during the last 50
years to married peasant women who wished to rid themselves of their husbands,
has revealed a story of witchcraft and murder which recalls the dark days of
the Middle Ages.

Anukka, who stoutly denies the charges, has been renounced
and feared for half a century as a “witch” by the superstitious peasants in
this district. She will soon be brought to trial with a number of other
peasants alleged to be involved in the crimes.

The police charge that about 20 wealthy husbands have been
mysteriously done away with in this district. The investigation in progress is
declared by authorities to involve many prominent persons in this and nearby
towns.

One of the most recent cases to attract attention was that
of Gaja Marinkov, rich and wealthy proprietor of Banci, who was suddenly taken
ill and died within a few days. Relatives who lived with him, and who
benefited by his will were accused by the police of poisoning him, but no
trace of poison could be found.

Fearing foul play and suspecting Anujka, Gaja Marinkov’s
eldest son told the police that he went to Anujka’s house and inquired discreetly
whether she could supply a poison to kill off an old relative of his. Anujka,
he said, asked how old he was and many similar questions, and finally said that
for a great price she could supply something. The young man then pretended to
doubt its efficiency to kill a healthy man and the old woman is declared have
replied:

“If it was good enough to kill Gaja Marinkov it will do for
anyone.”

Soon afterwards Lazar Ludushki, a wealthy peasant, died
under similar circumstances a week later Mrs. Ludushki married another peasant
from the same village. Within a few months a rich uncle of her second husband
died under astonishingly similar circumstances and his lands were added to
Stana Ludushka’s wealth. But this led to Mrs. Ludushka’s detention and an investigation
by the authorities, and information she gave the police is alleged to have
involved Anjuka.

When Anjuka was arrested she tried at first to frighten the
young police sergeant who came to her, he reported.

“I work with the devil, young man,” she said. “If you
imprison me you’ll remember it to your dying days. “Don’t play with the forces
of evil.”

When accused of having sold poisons she protested that she
had only supplied “magic water,” and claimed to have cured many people of ills
by its use.

Investigations show that several of the richer peasants of
Ilanci have died suddenly and mysteriously in the last few years.

FULL TEXT (Article 7
of 8): Vladimirovac, Jugoslavia – The arrest here of Anujka de Poshonja, a
90-year-old Rumania [sic] woman, who is charged with selling slow-acting
poisonous mixtures during the last 50 years to married peasant women who wished
to rid themselves to their husbands, has revealed a story of witchcraft and
murder which recalls the dark ages of the Middle Ages.

Anujka, who stoutly
denies the charges, has been renounced and feared for half a century as a
“witch” by the surreptitious peasants in the district. She will soon be brought
to trial with a number of other peasants, alleged to have to be involved in the
crimes.

The
police charge that about 20 wealthy husbands have been mysteriously done away
with in this district. The investigation now in progress is declared by
authorities to involve many prominent persons in this and nearby towns.

One of the most recent, cases to attract attention was that
of Gaja Marinkov, rich and healthy peasant proprietor of Banci, who was
suddenly taken ill and died within a few days. Relatives who lived with him,
and who benefited by his will were accused by the police of poisoning him, but
no trace of poison could be found.

Fearing
foul play and suspecting old Anujka, Gaja Marinkov's eldest son told the police
that he went to Anujka's house and inquired discreetly whether she could supply
a poison to kill off an old relative of his. Anujka, he said, asked how old he
was and many similar questions, and finally said that for a great price she
could supply something. The young man then pretended to doubt its efficiency
to kill a healthy man and the old woman is declared to have replied:

“If
it was good enough to kill Gaja Marinkov it will do for anyone.”

Soon
afterwards Lazar Ludushki, a wealthy peasant, died under similar circumstances
and a week later Mrs. Ludushki married another peasant from the same village.
Within a few months a rich uncle of her second husband died under astonishingly
similar circumstances and husbands added to Stana Ludushka's wealth. But this
led. To Mrs. Ludushka's detention and an investigation by the authorities, and,
information he gave the police is alleged to have involved Anujka.

When
Anujka was arrested she tried at first to frighten the young police sergeant
who came to her, he reported.

“I
work with the devil, young man,” she said. “If you imprison me you’ll remember
it to your dying day. Don’t play with the forces of evil.”

When
accused of having sold poisons she protested that she had sold only “magic
water,” and claimed to have cured many people of ills by its use.

Investigations
show that several of the richer peasants of Ilanci have died suddenly and
mysteriously in the last few years.

FULL TEXT (Article 8 of 8): A murder
trial has begun at Panchova, Jugo-Slavia, where 93-year-old Anyuka Dee is
charged with having murdered more than fifty men. She is known throughout the
district as the “Banat Witch.” Legends throw a veil of mystery around her
lonely life, and as the wives of wealthy farmers liked to go to her for help in
cases of illness and also to consult her on other difficulties, she drew a
large income, which enabled her to lead a life of comfort. Recently it was said
that Anyuka Dee, in addition to saving lives with herbs, also destroyed them
with arsenic if she were paid to do so.

Post-mortem examinations to the
district being of a careless nature, murderers have little to fear from
official enquiries. Anyuka Dee was accused by the gossip of a client who
complained to another woman that her husband would not die, although she had
given him arsenic for nearly a year. More than fifty men and women, who ore
alleged to have administered poison furnished by the “witch,” also will be
arraigned. The trial of Anyuka Dee was expected to last at least a month. She
is firmly convinced that she will not be executed on account of her age. She
even hopes that she will outlive her prison term, if she is sentenced. The old
woman is vain. She uses lipstick and powder, and waves her hair every day.
Having plenty of money, she frequently orders new dresses and has developed a
large appetite.

Pančevo (Serbian Cyrillic: Панчево),is a city located
in the southern part of Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, in Republic of
Serbia. Pančevo is located on the banks of the Danube and Tamiš, in the
southern part of Banat, and it's the administrative headquarters of the city of
Pančevo and the South Banat District. Pančevo is the fourth largest city in
Vojvodina by population. According to preliminary results of the census of
2011, in Pančevo live 76,203 people. According to the official results of the
year 2011, in the city of Pančevo live 123,414 inhabitants. [Wikipedia]

Sunday, November 24, 2013

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 3): Twenty exhumations – possibly
more – will have to be made in the Rumanian village of Vilagos before the
police can discover the full ramifications of an amazing wholesale poison plot.

Dozens of people have died mysteriously in recent months,
and there is a growing belief that all were murdered, not for large sums of
money, but in some cases for a few shillings.

Suspicion rests on a woman named Florica Duma, the village
“quack,” who eked out a living selling love potions and philters.

She is detained by the police, but the number of murder
charges to be brought against her will only be determined when the bodies have
been exhumed.

A village girl who was carrying a letter to a villager, and
who gave it to his wife by mistake, led the police on the trail of the murders.

The wife opened the letter found in it the full details of
the plot between her husband and another woman to get rid of her.

~ Arrest And Confession. ~

The husband admitted it. “I was sorry after I had promised
to murder her,” he declared. “She is a very good cook and the other woman is
not.”

While the police were investigating the source of the poison
another villager died. The police received an anonymous letter saying this was
a murder.

The widow was arrested and confessed. She had got poison
from a friend who in turn had obtained it from the village “quack.”

“The medicine was only a love potion,” pleaded the old
woman.

“Then give some to your cat,” ordered the police chief.

The old woman did so and the white cat writhed in agony and
died.

It was found that the old woman distilled arsenic from
fly-papers and concocted a poison draught. The women who assisted her to
distribute the medicine to unhappy wives or husbands seeking release received
only a few pence for each mission. The old sorceress was content to get a few
shillings for accomplishing a murder.

FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 3): Budapest – Aunt Florica Duma, of
the village of Arad [Arad is the region; village is Siria; “Vilagos” in
Hungarian], in Roumania is one of those benevolent, big-bosomed old creatures
whose very smile seems to spread sunshine in one’s path.

Appearances, however, are apt to be deceptive. For the
police have discovered, to their stupefaction, that Aunt Florica sold poison to
at least one woman with which to murder her husband. And if the authorities are
successful in their investigation, they hope to bring home to Auntie a number
of other similar crimes.

First intimation that all was not well in the village came
when Mrs. Vendel Czoliner, a farmer’s wife, rushed into the police station with
the news that her husband’s widowed sister-in-law, Anna Czoliner, 19, was
planning to poison her so as to marry the farmer.

As intercepted letter from the would-be killer to her
intended bride-groom gave the show away. Czoliner, interrogated, admitted his
share in the plot. But from whom, it was asked, had Anna bought the arsenic?
The solution seemed to be in identifying any person who had recently purchased
a large quantity of fly-papers, the base of which is arsenic.

The two days before the Czoliner case “broke” in the news, a
60-year-old farmer, one Paul Todorov, well-to-do, had died suddenly. Now came
an anonymous letter to George Todorov, the dead man’s nephew, declaring that
his uncle had been poisoned and denouncing a woman named Ilona Kovacs as the
poison-seller. The Widow Todorov, arrested, confessed. She had bought the white
crystals from Kovacs, who in turn had received them from Katica Borbely, a
gypsy.

Thus with many twistings and turnings the sinister trail led
relentlessly back to Aunt Flora, a concocter of love-filters and other potions.

Another anonymous letter, thrown in at the window of police
headquarters, laid six murders in all at the door of genial Aunt Florice.
Smilingly, Florica confessed her part in the removal of Todorov.

Aunt Flora’s pet white cat played a vital, not to say a
deathly, part in the drama of the revelation of her wickedness. The woman was
given fly papers, told to prepare them for Mrs. Todorov. Then they let the cat
drink the liquid. She died in agony.

But still Auntie smiles her beaming, benevolent smile.

[“The Part a Pet Cat Played in a Poison Mystery,” The
Spokesman-Review (Wa.), Aug. 12, 1933, p. 8?]

***

FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 3): Bucharest, April 13. – Husband poisoning on the
same grand scale as that which occurred in Hungary two years ago is being investigated
in the Vilagos district near Arad.

Twenty-three men and women whose wives had grown tired of
them are alleged to have fallen victims to an old woman named Duma Fluroca. She
has already confessed carrying on the grim business, supplying poison or
administering it for thew last ten years. She said she cannot remember the
total number of her victims.

Mrs. Fluroca’s husband testified that he knew the nature of
her activities, but feared her so much that he was not only afraid to reveal
them, but would not eat food himself until she tasted it first. As a result of
Mrs. Fluroca’s confession a number of widows have been arrested and
interrogated by a commission which is preparing the case.

Șiria
(German: Hellburg;
Hungarian: Világos) is
a commune in Arad County, Romania. According to the 2002 census it had 8,140
inhabitants.The administrative territory of the commune is 12,106 hectares
(29,910 acres) and it lies in the contact zone of the Arad Plateau and
Zărandului Mountains. It is composed of three villages: Galșa (Galsa), Mâsca (Muszka) and Șiria (situated at 28 kilometres (17 mi)
from Arad).

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 2): Budapest – Thirty-four persons are being tried in
the district court of Szolnok, Hungary, for the murder by poisoning of
forty-two others, the victims in nearly every case being husbands or brothers,
fathers or mothers of the defendants. All but three of the accused are woman,
all the crimes took place in the two nearby villages of Nagyrev and Tiszakürt,
the poison used was invariably and its source in at least twenty cases was the
village midwife, Suzie Olah, locally known as “aunt Susie.”

This almost demoniac figure, who helped her fellow villagers
with equal readiness into time and eternity, not only supplied the means of
murder, but furthered its sale by indictment and advice. She seems from all
accounts to have been a figure eminently fit to flit around the bubbling
cauldron in “Macbeth,” or to discharge the duties of an African witch doctor.

But it was not only her sinister and super-dimensional
personality that made the mass poisonings of Theiss valley one of the strangest
instances in the world of crime. Most remarkable of all was that a series of
such unsuspected poisonings could occur in two small villages, not sixty miles
from Budapest, over a period of twenty years, that nearly all the victims
should be men, the motive for the murders so apparent, and the beneficiaries
invariably women.

The three men to be tried are accused only of complicity.
The poisonings, in plan and execution, were entirely the work of women – surely
the “monstrous regiment of women” John Knox must have had in mind. The boldness
and utter callousness with which they carried on their criminal activities
seems to have be equaled only by the stupidity of the men who were their
victims, the husbands and fathers who saw friend after friend in the same
sudden agonies without ever divining a secret which seems to have been known or
suspected by nearly every woman in the two villages.

~ The Reckoning. ~

Of the thirty-four accused nine have already been tried,
thee sentenced to death, four to life imprisonment, one to fifteen years and
two freed for lack of sufficient evidence. Five women escaped trial by taking
their own lives, among them the sinister “Aunt Susie” herself.

Nagyrev-Tissakürt lies in an angle formed by the bendings of
the River Theiss, therefore in a little valley about fourteen miles square.
Itboasts some 1,400 inhabitants and
looks a quaint. Old World village where it sprawls by the river side, its low,
white cottages encircled by gardens. It is twenty-five miles from the nearest
railway station.

Budapest, which is puzzled and shamed by the discovery of
this plague spot in the midst of a smiling countryside not sixty miles from its
own doors, has sent many newspapers men and other investigators to discover the
conditions which produced it. They found two villages inhabited by poor
farmers, dependent for existence on farms and vineyards already small and ever
newly divided as sons succeeded fathers; the whole ringed round as by an iron
girdle with huge estates. Growth has been impossible, young people have been
denied both land and opportunity, and by the same vicious process children have
been transformed from a blessing into a curse.

One of the principal occupations of the villages is the
growing of grapes and the manufacture of wine, and the men to have drunk deeply
of their own products. The drunkenness and brutality as husbands have been
advanced by many of the accused women as an excuse for getting rid of them.

~ The Main Motive. ~

If the men were brutish, the women seem to have been
remarkable of the strength and persistence of their passions. The average age
of their passions. The average age of those so far tried is over 55, yet lust
played an even greater part than greed in their crimes. They killed husbands
and lovers as they grew tired of them and took others. Shut off in Winter from
the world around them, kept indoors during the Spring and Fall by the knee-deep
mud of the streets, they had few opportunities for improvement. The village had
neither doctor nor adequately trained teachers. Not only paucity of of land but
unequal distribution of the gains of culture was at fault.

Nagyrev-Tissakürt was about as well supplied with the
refinements, facilities and opportunities of civilization as an African krall.
But this field which culture had allowed to lie fallow proved fruitful for
Suzie Olah, who six years after her advent had become not only doctor and
mid-wife to the village, but its evil genius. It is forty years since Aunt
Suzie came to Nagyrev-Tissakürt. And though she is dead now, her unseemly ghost
still wanders in and out at the trials in Szolnok.

Aunt Suzie was not unlettered farm woman. She had “studied”
at least the rudiments of her profession in the big cities. She had keen powers
of observation, sharp understanding and seems to have been a monster of energy
of unscrupulousness. A fat, smiling, Buddha-like figure, she knew all the cares
and troubles of the villagers and was liked by most of them. For one reason or
other she exercised influence amounting to actual power over these
simple-minded people. She was no fewer than nine times accused of abortion, but
discharged. Finally the earlier midwife of the village, Aunt Suzie’s rival,
disappeared without trace. Her son, suspecting foul play on Aunt Suzie’s part,
fired several shots at her but missed and was sent to prison for two years.
From this moment on the villagers believed that Aunt Susie had a charmed
existence against all dangers and all judgments.

Not wishing to risk another trial, Aunt Suzie apparently
decided to supplement her earnings in a new fashion. She began a series of
child poisonings. There would be a discreet dosing, a little funeral, a tiny
grave – and a mouth less to feed. Aunt Suzie worked exclusively with arsenic
extracted from flypaper. It seemed effective. She decided to enlarge her
sphere. She found wives who had grown tired of their husbands, children who
coveted the property of their elders, mothers with ailing sons. Aunt Suzie
would whisper that she knew a way.

~ The Business of Poisoning. ~

And then for twenty years long death strode month after
month through the village streets, unnoticed by the law. A husband would be
seized after he had eaten his mid-day lunch in the fields, a son on his
birthday, an old mother after she had spent a day in her daughter’s house. The
Messalinas of Nagyrev were able to change husbands and lovers at will. Aunt
Suzie charged the equivalent of $25 to $80 for each lethal dose, according to
the circumstances of the purchase. The business grew; rivals appeared who
manufactured the poison and sold it at lower prices.

How did the murders go so long unpunished? Though the women
of the village must have had at least some inkling of the dreadful dream being
played before their eyes, they kept silent. Many of them were bound together by
the dark threads of guilty knowledge; others, perhaps, by the reflection that
the day might come when they, too, would be glad to avail themselves at the same
means.

As for the outside world, there not only were no doctors,
but the “halottkem,” or official whose duty it was to issue death certificates,
was a bell-ringer and son-in-law of Aunt Suzie. His procedure, so he told the
gendarmes, was to hold a feather before the mouth of the body to see whether
life was extinct, then issue a certificate of death from pneumonia, heart
disease or senile decay, which ever seemed most likely. These certificates were
duly filed and served to appease early suspicions.

In 1924, however, a body taken from the river was found to
be that of the 79-year-old mother of a Mrs. Bukenovenski. She had disappeared
mysteriously eight months before. An autopsy showed that she had been poisoned,
not drowned. It was established that the poison had been administered by her
daughter, who had then, as an additional precaution, had wheeled her mother’s
body to the river in a wheelbarrow and thrown it in. this added safeguard
proved her ruin. She was sentenced to death, but her sentence was commuted to
life imprisonment.

~ An Anonymous Letter. ~

This discovery apparently excited the suspicions of the
authorities and aroused the alarm of the men of the village. There were
tentative investigations, but nothing could be proved, and meanwhile the poisonings
ceased. Then in July of last year the Calvinist cantor of Tiszakürt charged
Mrs. Ladislaus Szabo with serving him poisoned wine. He had been saved by a
doctor’s efforts with a stomach pump. Almost at the same time a war invalid
accused Mrs. Szabo of a similar attempt. Other such charges had been made,
which came to nothing. But State Prosecutor Kronberg received an anonymous
letter which spurred him on to unusual lengths. “The authorities are doing
nothing,” it read, “and the poisoners are carrying on their work undisturbed.
This is my last attempt. If this also fails then there is no justice.” The
Tiszakürt police were told to investigate.

A few weeks later, on SS. Peter and Paul’s day, the first
day of the harvest, the streets of Tiszakürt were resounding with song and
gypsy music when suddenly a rumor was born which took wings and flew through
the village. “The Szabos have been arrested,” ran the report. “It’s already
known that they poisoned Mrs. Szabo’s father and uncle.” the music stopped, the
singers grew silent. Women whispered to each other and avoided the eyes of
their menfolk. The gendarmes visited house after house and the number of
arrested quickly mounted. Aunt Suzie was among them.

The interrogations began in the open air. The accused denied
their guilt indignantly for a time. Then, under pressure, Ludwig Szabo gave
way. “Yes,” he admitted, “we killed my father-in-law four years ago and last
Autumn my wife’s uncle. All on account of land. My wife incited me to do it.”

Aunt Suzie stubbornly maintained her innocence. She had had
nothing to do with the murders and knew nothing about them. But five other
wpmen confessed, and on the following day were taken by boat down the Theiss to
Skolnok and imprisoned. There they repeated their admissions. Aunt Suzie,
however, still maintained her denials. The State Prosecutor had an idea. He let
her go free, but told the police to follow her carefully.

The fat old woman, her Buddha-like face unsmiling now but
still impassive, took boat to Nagyrev. Arrived, she waddled hastily from house
to house with the gendarmes unnoticed at her heels. Those she warned were
promptly arrested and taken to prison. At last Aunt Suzie noticed that she was
under observation, and her judgment, acute as ever, told her that all was lost.
She went straight to her own home, and when the bayonets of the pursuing
gendarmes glittered over the garden hedge she drew a flask of poison from under
her apron and emptied it. An hour later she was dead.

Now the dark history began to unroll itself. Investigations,
confessions, exhumations and autopsies followed each other in rapid
successions. Some of the women withdrew their confessions, and in the
cemeteries unknown hands tore out crosses, defaced names and inscriptions on
the tombstones. But it availed little. Grave after grave was opened, villagers
were examined by hundreds, ands still the number of arrests grew.

The strain began to tell on innocent and guilty alike. Four
other women followed Aunt Suzie’s example, among them one who was to all
appearances innocent. Mrs. Marie Zsabai had been arrested but released. Her
husband’s body was the first of thirty corpses examined which contained no
traces of arsenic. Dr. Kovacs, Mrs. Zsabai’s lawyer, hastened to Nagyrev to
tell her the welcome news. He arrived just as her body was being taken in turn
to the cemetery. She had hanged herself out of fear of death.

Now that its crime has been laid bare to the astonished gaze
of the world Nagyrev and Tiszakürt have lost even their appearance of rustic
innocence. There are some streets every house in which has an occupant in
prison. Some of the houses have long been bolted and left bare. There is a
strange stillness in the streets. The villagers go about furtively, the
innocent ashamed of the reputation their villages have acquitted, the guilty
fearing each newcomer. For a time in the cemetery fifty graves lay open.

~ A Self-Questioning in Hungary. ~

The scandal stirred the conscience of all Hungary. Since the
Theiss Valley is a Calvinistic neighborhood it has alarmed the Calvinist
episcopate. Bishop Desiderius Balthhazar himself traveled through the whole
district, suspended his clergymen and teachers and named proved men in their
stead.

The trials of the thirty-four peasant Borgias began in
December. Many of them had confessed their guilt in the preliminary examination
but repudiated the confessions when they came to trial. The strangest part was
the view they took, as shown in their stereotyped explanations. “We are not
murderesses,” they said. “We neither stabbed nor drowned our husbands. They
have simply died from poison. It was an easy death for them and no murder.”
Murder seemed to them to involve bloodshed and they had shed no blood.

Their confessions, they alleged, had been extracted by third
degree methods. According to the evidence of a gendarme the method was even
more subtle. The witness hid under a bed in the police station and heard the
70-year-old Rosalie Sebastyen advise Rosa Holyba to confess their common crime,
advice which Rosa Holyba refused. The gendarmes caught Mrs. Holyba by the ankle
and emerged amid shrieks of fear. Both women were terrified and admitted their
guilt. They were sentenced to life imprisonment.

The trials are held at intervals of two or three weeks and
two or three prisoners are taken at a time. At the second trial Mrs. Julius
Csaba was found guilty of murdering her husband but let off with a fifteen-year
sentence, his drunkenness and brutality to her being accepted as extenuating
circumstances.

The third trial was the high point. The woman who had
previously appeared had seemed to be poor and stupid peasants. Maria Kardos,
accused of the murder of her own son and husband and the attempted murder of
the husband of a friend, was obviously of a different type. She had more
intelligent features, more correct accents and fasionable garb, though these
did not serve to moderate the crudity of the crimes of which she was accused.

~ Song Asked of a Victim. ~

This woman in her youth had been the belle of Tiszakürt. As
portrayed by the State Prosecutor and his witnesses at her trial, she was an
unrestrained creature who combined a taste for city refinements with a peasant
coarseness in the indulgence of her desires. After marrying and divorcing two
husbands she found herself at the age of forty with a 23-year-old son, whose
health had made him a burden. Moreover, she had fast taken a young lover and
did not wish to have this constant reminder of her own age. She consulted Aunt
Suzie. The first dose of arsenic only made the boy ill. One fine Autumn day she
had his bed moved outside in the courtyard.

“I gave him some more poison in his medicine,” she told the
police. “And then, suddenly, I remembered how beautifully my boy used to sing
in church and I thought I would like to hear him once more. So I said: ‘Sing,
my boy. Sing me my favorite song.’ He sang it in his lovely, clear voice.”

The song ended in agony. The poison had done its work.

This Borgia figure then married once more. But she could not
be faithful and her new husband threatened her with divorce. Again the arsenic.
Aunt Suzie charged nothing for this dose. Mrs. Kardos’s husband had once been
her own lover and she had never forgiven his defection.

Maria Kardos was sentenced to death. On her second day in
court her composure gave way and she repeated the confession she had made to
the police.

Hungary’s first soldier blinded in the war, once a handsome
and popular young farmer, was one of the victims. He had been discharged from a
military hospital for “home nursing.” His wife, furious at finding a blind man
on her hands consulted Aunt Suzie. When the first self administered the second
with practiced hand. He died that night in agony.

New trials bring new revelations. The names of the towns
have spread through the whole world. The notoriety was made all Hungary
uncomfortable. It has been bad propaganda abroad. It has been a shock at home
to find, within sixty miles of the capital, a neighborhood which might better
belong to the heart of Africa or back in the darkest period of the Middle
Ages.It makes a strange tale in 1930.

[John MacCormac, “Murder By Wholesale: A Tale From Hungary,”
New York Times (N.Y.), Mar 16,
1930, p. XX3]

***

An article dealing with an earlier stage of the
investigation:

FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 2): Budapest, Friday, Sept. 13 – The
wholesale poisoning of their husbands by women of Nagyrev District, in
connection with which thirty widows are already charged with poisoning
thirty-eight husbands, took a sensational turn yesterday.

Information reached the public prosecutor which caused an
ardor for the exhumation of the bodies of the two children, Justin and Stephen
Cher, in Nagyrev. An examination revealed that both bodies contained enormous
quantities of arsenic.

One of the babies was born in 1916, the other in 1923. Each
lived just three days. It was established that the mother, who was the wife of
Ludwig Cher, gave Justin Stephen goats’ milk heavily doped with arsenic. Like
the widow of Nagyrev, the woman obtained the arsenic from the famous wholesale
poisoner, Mme. Fazekas, a midwife.

A fresh chapter of horrors is likely to be opened up by this
discovery. The State Attorney is convinced that the murderess made a general
practice of relieving mothers of unwanted children, as well as wives of
unwanted husbands, and ordered a general exhumation of all infants who died
within the last twenty years, where there was the slightest suspicion as to the
cause of death.

In the whole country of Szolnok it is impossible to find any
witnesses not directly or indirectly involved in the mass slaughter or
superfluous relatives. Every one has some relatives. Every one has some
relation who is connected with the affair.

Three more bodies of husbands were exhumed and examined
yesterday, and in each case large quantities of arsenic were detected. Fifty
more adult bodies are awaiting exhumation.

[“Two Nagyrev Babies Poisoned By Arsenic – Exhumation Gives
New Turn to Series of Murders in Hungarian District.” New York Times (N.Y.),
Sep. 13, 1929, p. 22]

Friday, November 22, 2013

FULL TEXT: Vienna, Friday – Two more women out of 34
prisoners who were arrested on the charge of poisoning their relatives at
Magyret (Nagyrev) in Hungary were tried to-day at the Skolznok Law Courts.
Maria Kardos, aged 53 years, was charged with murder of her husband and her
son, and Julia Dari, aged 49 years, was indicted for the murder of her husband,
her lover, and her mother; all the murders, it was alleged, were committed through
poisoning with arsenic.

These two prisoners differ from the others hitherto tried in
that they are the richest among them and also because there are traces of past
beauty in their faces, while the other defendants were mostly of a boorish if
not almost ugly type. The two women were also better dressed than their
companions.

Frau Dari pleaded not guilty. Her husband, she said in her
evidence, was a drunkard and suffered from blood-poisoning. She took him to
hospital in Budapest, but a week later her returned to Magyret (Nagyrev). As to
the lover’s death, she attributed it to digestive troubles; he ought to have
undergone an operation which he refused to have. Dari is also accused of having
poisoned her mother by giving her a cake containing arsenic. She said in her
evidence that she loved her mother and that her neighbor only accused her of
this crime because she hated her. later on, when examined by the judge, the
prisoner admitted that the husband received a glass of wine from Frau Kardos
when he was visiting her at her place, and that this wine apparently contained
arsenic as he was taken ill afterwards and died.

~ Midwife Who Coveted a House. ~

Frau Kardos pleaded not guilty, but under examination of the
Judge admitted that the midwife in the village, Frau Ollah, who had since
escaped earthly justice by committing suicide, induced her to poison her son
Alexander Kovacz, who was 23 years of age and very ill. “Why let him suffer?”
said Frau Ollah; “poison him.” Frau Ollah desired the house of the young man,
said Frau Kardos in her evidence, and for this reason suggested the poisoning.
When Frau Kardos left the room of her son for a minute the midwife poured
poison over the food, but she pleaded that she had not had any knowledge of
Frau Olla’s final plan.

Under the examination of the Judge, Frau Kardos admitted
that Ollah poisoned the prisoner’s husband, which she said was a much easier
thing, because Frau Ollah hated the late Herr Kardos. “If the midwife did this
all on her own, why did you pay her money for it?” asked the judge. The
prisoner could not answer this question.

FULL
TEXT: Twelve women were arrested in Zenta, Hungary, charged with poisoning
their husbands.

The
wholesale plot was discovered by a man who suspected that his wife was trying
to kill him. Believing she had placed poison in his soup, he compelled his wife
to drink it, and she died.

This
started an investigation, and the police found an old woman named Sivacky, who
confessed that she had sold poison to several women. She gave the names of a
number, who are charged with killing their husbands to marry other men.

The
authorities have ordered that the bodies of several men believed to have been
poisoned by their wives be exhumed and examined.

Senta (Serbian Cyrillic: Сента Hungarian: Zenta
Romanian: Zenta; German: Senta or formerly Zenta; Turkish:
Zenta) is a town and municipality on the bank of the Tisa river in the Vojvodina
province, Serbia. Although geographically located in Bačka, it is part of the North
Banat District. The town has a population of 18,704, whilst the Senta
municipality has 23,316 inhabitants (2011 census).

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

FULL TEXT: Some time ago the Pesth correspondent of the
Standard reported that a large number of arrests had been made in certain
villages, in South Hungary, chiefly inhabited by Serbs and Roumanians, the
evidence going to show that a wholesale epidemic of poisoning had broken out
among the women of the place who administered arsenic to their husbands
whenever they wanted to marry somebody else. The first of the trials came on at
Panosova recently, and ended with the conviction of a young pleasant woman,
Draga Radovancey, who was sentenced to be hanged. An old peasant woman, Persa
Czirin, who supplied the poison, was released for want of sufficient evidence.

Pančevo (Serbian Cyrillic: Панчево),is a city located
in the southern part of Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, in Republic of
Serbia. Pančevo is located on the banks of the Danube and Tamiš, in the
southern part of Banat, and it's the administrative headquarters of the city of
Pančevo and the South Banat District. Pančevo is the fourth largest city in
Vojvodina by population. According to preliminary results of the census of
2011, in Pančevo live 76,203 people. According to the official results of the
year 2011, in the city of Pančevo live 123,414 inhabitants. [Wikipedia]

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Note: Captain Frank Irsch was born at Saarburg, Germany,
December 4th. 1840, and died at Tampa, Florida, August 19, 1906, at the age of
63 years. He came to this country while still a small boy. The Libby Prison
escape, mentioned below,was one of the
most famous prison breaks of the US Civil War. Irsch received the Congressional
Medal of Honor.

***

FULL TEXT: Justice Steckler, in the Supreme Court yesterday,
on the application for the release to-day of Francis Irsch, a veteran of the
civil war, and one of those who escaped from Libby Prison by cutting an
underground tunnel to freedom. Irsch has been Ludlow Street Jail since July 14
last for disobedience of an order of the court made several years ago,
directing him to pay his wife $8 a week alimony pending the determination of a
suit broughtfor a separation. The suit
has never been tried, and the amount of arrears of alimony due Mrs. Irsch
aggregated $3,779.59. Irsch had a countersuit for an absolute divorce against
his wife, but it was dropped.

Dr. John Shrady testified that the prisoner was suffering
from various diseased which would terminate fatally within a short time unless
he received is freedom.

Publisher’s blurb:
A Spanish judge has came forward and denounced the institutionalized misandry
that has infested the Spanish judiciary. He has now documented it all in a book
that is currently shaking Spanish society. Lucian Vâlsan and the European News
Department brings a review of the ”Dictatorship of Gender.”

•◊•◊•◊•◊•◊•

This article is crucially important. It reveals the
connection between the roll-out of new tyrannical regulations and laws by
unaccountable government figures and the insane hoax ideology called “gender
ideology.”

Under the guise of “health care” and “wellness”
(psychological wellness as determined by government-sanctioned principles) the
sort of authoritarian nightmare that has already been implemented in Spain will
be rolled-out in the United States and the rest of the world that falls under
the purview of international treaties originated in Western social engineering
think tanks.

The population of the United States is the least historically
informed one in the industrialized world. Because of this it has been
incredibly easy for social engineers to concoct a historical narrative to be
used as propaganda in order to justify a certain ideological agenda. Gender
ideology is a large part of it but its distortions of history are not designed
merely as a means of offering females the opportunity to continue and increase
the special privileges of the past. Gender ideology’s main purpose (though the
majority of its adherents may not realize it) is to assist governments to gain
control of children in order to train them to obey the dictates of the
government and the major corporations who pay the politicians who serve their
desires.